As a former Executive Director of the World Bank I know that the columnists of the Financial Times have more voice than what I ever had, and therefore they might need some checks-and-balances.
Currently, having probably trampled some delicate ego, I am a persona non grata at FT.
Would the child shouting out “the Emperor is naked” have his observation published in FT? Would the child now need a PhD for that?

For more see "A Blog is Born" at the very bottom.

December 28, 2006

Sir, if we look at how globalization like a sunflower that looks for the sun orients its production facilities towards low salary environments and if we instead of the ownership of physical productive capital assets think about intellectual property rights and other modern means to acquire the control of markets that allows for the extraction of surplus rents, well then of course John Thornhill could argue his rebirth of Marxism in “Behold Marx’s twitch” December 28. But, we also need to remember that is we really set our mind to it we could in fact take any philosophers book or treaty and twitch and read anything we want into it.

Coca Cola was launched after Karl Marx death but long before the last volume of Das Kapital was published and it contained cocaine; was sold in fountains; bears very little resemblance to today’s vanilla coke but is still 100% more Coca Cola than what today’s so many Marxism are an original or even a Classic Marxism… whatever that now signified. The problem with Marxism is that contrary to Coca Cola there is no owner of the brand and so anyone is allowed to lift his hand up and proclaims himself a Marxist or a communist and, if he finds enough people to scare and are willing to serve as his amplifiers, then he can bask in the shine of a historical movement and sell himself as an ideologue with a vision.

Of course we all know it would be difficult for politicians to market themselves as brittneyspearists even when such a label could be more indicative of their movements but, as so many real problem exists out there in the world and for which so many new solutions have to be developed, it really behooves us all not to make things more difficult by allowing for the use of misleading labels. Marx missed his train, it is over, let us now please move on.

December 27, 2006

Sir, Lawrence Summers with “A lack of fear is cause for concern”, December 27, put his finger where it really hurts since many of us never imagined possible the huge discrepancies that exists between how nervous most investors seem to feel, in private, and how little of this risk perceptions the market seems to be transmitting through its public pricing.

Somehow it looks like either the market has lost the connection with the investors or that someone somewhere is peddling some real potent valiums or extremely credible placebos. At least when Summers says “As institutions have become more sophisticated in their approach to risk they have felt comfortable in taking positions they might have been reluctant to hold even a few years ago” we know someone has been gulping down a lot of medicine lately. So let us now pray it is what the doctored ordered and that it does not have too bad side effects.

December 22, 2006

Sir, I subscribe almost entirely to Martin Wolf’s “Why immigration policy must be a compromise”, December 22, and the almost is there as I find it hard to understand how his view “that work permits should be auctioned” to the best bidder is related to a “compromise”. Will the one offering the most for the work permit be the best worker or is he just the one needing or capable of paying the most for a shelter?

If Wolf really believes that the market mechanism should be used to optimize migration flows then anyone wanting to move out of his country should also have the right to sell his “place” in the market. We could thereby create some real incentives for people to sell an expensive UK residence right and buying themselves a dirt-cheap Tanzania one, with view of making a huge capital gain when this last poor country gets developed.

In the debate on immigration we must never forget that no matter how much we take shelter behind reinforced borders, at the end of the day, we are all still living, ever more cramped, on the very small planet earth.

December 15, 2006

Sir, Martin Feldstein argues in his “Immigration is no way to fund an ageing population” December 14, that immigration would generate very little additional tax revenues as immigrants “generally earn less than native Spanish workers” but which is something that with time, and increased scarcity of younger working people, is and should not necessarily be true. That said by giving the example of Spain where “the number of working-age people per retiree is expected to fall from 4.5 today to fewer than two in 2050” he also brings forward evidence that seems to prove that without immigration there would be no way to fund or manage an ageing population… unless of course the ageing population emigrates. The way out of this conundrum that Feldstein proposes is to “supplement the tax-financed benefits with increased saving and investments” but what that has to do with immigration is somewhat hard to understand, since whether they can afford it or not, the elderly will still need help, and also someone should be doing the jobs they all do now in Spain, unless you want that nation to behave like an old soldier and just fade away.

Any poor victim of Darfur’s genocide like killings who might have invested his last few hopes in someone coming from abroad to save him, would have collapsed in despair had he read Christopher Caldwell’s “It is best to stay out of Darfur”, December 16. Of course we must agree with Caldwell that no country should be expected or even have a carte blanche to enter anywhere for anything but, if the world cannot find an expeditious way of taking care of the worst kinds of political hooliganism, then it will stand precious little chance of solving the many other challenges that are increasingly posed by a globalizing world. And so Mr Caldwell do you really not believe that your XXI century country with 37.600 per capita GNI, together with some others likeminded, do not have in them the capability of designing an effective plan of what to do in the XIX century 640 per capita GNI Darfur? If no, then, if it is not too late, may I humbly suggest that it is also best for you to stay out from bringing new children into this world.

December 09, 2006

Sir, you are absolutely right defending that the term of copyrights and patents should not be extended. Just to think about all those great works out there that are condemned to live in the twilight zone between not being considered economically viable for republishing but not yet either worth any other effort while they are copyrighted, make us want to cry. In fact sometimes it might not be about protecting intellectual property at all, it might just be that many new writers out there just do not want to face the competition from the dead or forgotten.

Having authored a book that I believe great and relevant and might yet not find its way to the general public during my lifetime, I at least relish the idea that someone will discover it in the future and then push it in any way he can.

Me and my constituency!

Me and my constituency!

FT, just so that you know:

Some very few regulators thinking they were capable of managing the bank risks of the world, caused and are still causing immense sufferings, and you Sir are refusing to help holding them accountable for that.

My wicked question to FT

When do banks most need capital, when the risky turn out risky, or when the "not-risky" turn out risky? --- Yep, I think so too!

Videos: The Financial Crisis

My credentials

I have more credentials than most to speak out on the financial crisis and the subprime financial regulations having spoken out loudly about that since 1997...which could be embarrassing to “experts” with weak egos.

Most of those who think of themselves so broadminded when asking for “out of the box thinking” are so very narrow-minded they can only accept what comes, if that outside box lies “within their own small networks”.

Thank you, Martin Wolf

And on July 12 2012 Wolf also wrote that when "setting bank equity requirements, it is essential to recognise that so-called “risk-weighted” assets can and will be gamed by both banks and regulators. As Per Kurowski, a former executive director of the World Bank, reminds me regularly, crises occur when what was thought to be low risk turns out to be very high risk."

And that is something that I of course also appreciate, but that yet makes me curious on why Wolf does not follow up on it.

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I don’t take comments here because I might not have the time to answer (or censor) them and I hate unanswered comments, but, if you want me to comment on something somewhere else invite me and I might show up: perkurowski@gmail.com

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Off-the-blog

One great perk I get from maintaining a blog like this is that it allows me to sustain many conversations with some great journalists who also need and wish to be kept “off-the-record” or as I call it “off-the-blog”.

Yet one wonders

Between January 2003 and September 2006, out of 138 letters to the editor that I sent to the Financial Times before I placed them on this blog they published these 15. Not bad! Thank you FT!

Unfortunately, since then and until the very last day of the decade, out of some 1.000 letters that you can find here, FT published none, zero, zilch. Of course FT is under no obligation whatsoever to publish any of my letters and of course one should not exclude the possibilities that my letters might have quite dramatically gone from bad to worse… yet one wonders.

My usual suspects are:

1. Someone in FT with a delicate ego feels his or her importance diminished by giving voice to a lowly non PhD from a developing country daring to opine on many issues of developed countries.

2. That FT has some sort of conflict of interest with the credit rating agencies that makes it hard for them to give too much relevance to someone who considers they have been given too much powers.

3. The FT establishment had perhaps decided there were only macro economic problems and not any financial regulation problems, and wanted to hear no monothematic contradictions on that.

4. That FT feels slightly embarrassed when someone repeatedly asks the emperor-is-naked type question of what is the purpose of the banks and realizing this was something FT should have itself asked a long time ago.

5. It is way too much oversight for FT to handle.

6. Or am I just supposed to be a living example of one half of the Financial Times motto, namely that of "without favour"Which one do you believe is closest to the truth?

A Blog is born

I like reading The Financial Times, or FT as it is known, and I frequently write letters to the editor and some of them that have indeed been kindly published, for which I feel thankful. But then I realized that all those letters to the editor that for reasons impossible for me to comprehend were never published, were condemned to an eternal silence not of their own fault, and so I decided to, at a marginal cost of zero, to resurrect them and keep them alive, right here.

English is not my mother language so bear with me and you’ll probably note when my letter has been published in FT by its correctness. Swedish is my mother language but I have not written anything serious in it for about 40 years and last time I tried, they just laughed their hearts out because of my démodés. Polish is my father language but, unfortunately, I do not speak a word of Polish, much less write it. Yes Spanish is my language, as I am from Venezuela and although I trust I write in it with great flair, I would still never dream of publishing an article in Spanish without having it edited by my wife.

And so friends here is my Tea with FT blog with my old and new letters to the editor. I hope you will share them with me now and again, and then again and again.

Welcome, and cheers, as I believe they say over there.

Per

PS. Just so that FT does not get too cocky and believe it is my only window to the world, I will now and again publish a letter sent to the editor of another publication.